The Thing About Pam

Speaker 1 A Mochi Moment from Mark, who writes, I just want to thank you for making GOP1s affordable. What would have been over $1,000 a month is just $99 a month with Mochi.

Speaker 1 Money shouldn't be a barrier to healthy weight. Three months in and I have smaller jeans and a bigger wallet.

Speaker 3 You're the best.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Mark. I'm Myra Ammet, founder of Mochi Health.
To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 4 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 5 Try Angel Soft for your tushi.

Speaker 6 It's made by angels.

Speaker 5 Soft and strong, budget-friendly.

Speaker 6 The choice is simple. A roll that feels like paradise and always at a heavenly prize.

Speaker 6 Angel Soft, Angel Soft. Soft and strong, so it's simple.

Speaker 1 Pick up a pack today.

Speaker 10 Angelsoft.

Speaker 6 Soft and strong.

Speaker 11 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 12 Welcome to the 28th season of Dateline. Tonight, a new chapter in our most twisted mystery ever.

Speaker 11 At the heart of it, a woman as cagey as they come.

Speaker 14 He was pounding on the door, and once it flew open, that's when I shot him. And I just kept shooting at him.

Speaker 15 How would you describe Pam?

Speaker 16 Hopper? Bold.

Speaker 17 Bold as they get.

Speaker 10 She started screaming that he was a murderer.

Speaker 13 She She thinks she was clever.

Speaker 18 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 3 I didn't realize how dangerous she is.

Speaker 10 You look over your shoulder, 24-7.

Speaker 19 Lady in a black SUV kicking people up, claiming to be with Daylight.

Speaker 21 Just my gut told me something's not recording this late.

Speaker 3 Three people died suspiciously, and she's been the last person with them.

Speaker 22 It's Pam.

Speaker 10 Anything can happen.

Speaker 13 I think she knew that she's going to be primetime again, and everybody's going to be paying attention to Pam Hop.

Speaker 16 Here's Keith Morrison with The Thing About Pam.

Speaker 24 Where does it live? Evil.

Speaker 25 Where is it born?

Speaker 27 Does it spring like a horror movie from some dark and frightening place?

Speaker 26 Or does it live quietly in fine society people

Speaker 32 in their respectable homes on their wide green lawns as they live their decent lives, tend carefully manicured friendships?

Speaker 35 This story is about the evil that smiles and helps and sympathizes,

Speaker 37 that worms its hidden way into unsuspecting minds

Speaker 24 and kills.

Speaker 40 This is about such a woman as we had never seen.

Speaker 27 And though we followed her for years, we had no idea.

Speaker 38 Until now,

Speaker 35 the story we can finally tell

Speaker 15 tonight.

Speaker 42 It was December 27th, 2011.

Speaker 37 A quiet little suburban town near St.

Speaker 31 Louis called Troy, Missouri.

Speaker 44 It was evening, 7.30 or so, a winter chill was settling on the rooftops, frosting the lawns.

Speaker 43 Outside the little house, under the streetlight, was a post-Christmas silence.

Speaker 41 Then, the sound of a door closing, female footsteps retreating, a car pulling away into the dark,

Speaker 50 and silence again.

Speaker 39 Then, two hours later.

Speaker 51 911, what is the location of your emergency?

Speaker 19 Okay, I need you to take a couple deep breaths so I can see what's going on.

Speaker 53 I just got home from a friend's house

Speaker 53 and my wife already killed herself.

Speaker 48 The man you hear on the phone, so apparently distraught, so beside himself, is Russ Faria, telling the dispatcher he had arrived home to find his wife Betsy lying on the living room floor, a knife still embedded firmly in her neck.

Speaker 51 Russell, do you think that she's beyond help right now?

Speaker 53 I think he is dead. Okay.

Speaker 53 Oh, God.

Speaker 53 God.

Speaker 55 It looked, he said, like she'd killed herself.

Speaker 51 What did she do, do you know?

Speaker 55 The police arrived, had a look around,

Speaker 61 and took a still hysterical man to the sheriff's office for questioning.

Speaker 63 Take a deep breath form your eyes.

Speaker 45 They got him settled down and asked him,

Speaker 56 why did he say it was suicide?

Speaker 17 Did she want to hurt herself?

Speaker 66 I don't know if she just wanted to scare me or what, but she said she was going to kill herself.

Speaker 24 What's going on that day?

Speaker 58 That's when Russ told them.

Speaker 55 Betsy was dying.

Speaker 49 Stage four cancer.

Speaker 58 That afternoon, he said she'd gone to chemo and later to her mom's place.

Speaker 68 Well, he worked all afternoon at his home office.

Speaker 47 And after?

Speaker 66 So I got cigarettes and dog food.

Speaker 24 And

Speaker 66 then then I went over to my friend Mike's house.

Speaker 55 Mike's house, where he went for his regular Tuesday game night with friends.

Speaker 68 Said he called Betsy on the way.

Speaker 63 I asked her if she needed a ride on my way home.

Speaker 66 And she said, no, that her friend was going to bring her home. And I said, okay, well, I'll see you at home later.

Speaker 9 And I love you.

Speaker 26 Then at nine, he left Mike's, picked up a couple of sandwiches at Arby's, drove home, opened the door just before 9.40.

Speaker 34 and there she was.

Speaker 55 It was early next morning when Betsy's mother, Janet Meyer, got the awful news.

Speaker 7 Four sergeants marched right in. One of them looked right at me and said,

Speaker 7 Betsy's dead.

Speaker 15 That's the way it was announced?

Speaker 7 That's the way it was told to me. Wasn't like that.

Speaker 57 Betsy, her exuberant daughter, her life of the party.

Speaker 7 Magnetic personality. She drew people like flies and just just energized everybody.

Speaker 70 All very true, said her sisters.

Speaker 39 Betsy was unique.

Speaker 71 She started DJing at the age of, I think she was 18, maybe even younger than that.

Speaker 24 Wow.

Speaker 51 And she could start up a party. She takes you outside of your comfort zone.

Speaker 71 You will not have a bad time if you would hang out with her.

Speaker 49 And her 12-year marriage to Russ?

Speaker 33 Cops wrote down Betsy's mother's response.

Speaker 72 They had a great relationship.

Speaker 38 And it was to Betsy's mother the two of them went when they learned that Betsy's cancer, once in remission, had come roaring back and was stage four.

Speaker 40 Russ's cousin Mary Anderson.

Speaker 10 When they were standing in the kitchen and Betsy was rubbing his arm, he had to walk out to the carport because he couldn't talk about it.

Speaker 30 She was comforting him.

Speaker 10 She was comforting him because he couldn't face it.

Speaker 74 But Betsy was determined to enjoy life while she could, insisted they go ahead with plans for a cruise with family and friends.

Speaker 10 He wanted Betsy to do anything and everything that Betsy's ever wanted to do. He wanted her to have those experiences.

Speaker 75 So went on that cruise, for example.

Speaker 16 That cruise.

Speaker 10 That's when they went to swim with the dolphins.

Speaker 55 But now, in the sheriff's office, Russ was saying Betsy had tried suicide before a couple of times.

Speaker 26 So when he saw the knife, he assumed she succeeded.

Speaker 41 That's when the detectives told him

Speaker 78 that Betsy could not have killed herself.

Speaker 79 It was impossible.

Speaker 80 You have been stabbed over 25 times.

Speaker 81 Oh my god.

Speaker 81 25 times.

Speaker 80 They're still counting.

Speaker 33 In fact, the pathologist counted more than 50 stab wounds.

Speaker 80 Holy God. A burglar doesn't do that, Russ.
A stranger doesn't do that. Somebody who loves that person does that.
Somebody who goes in a blind rage does that.

Speaker 57 Somebody.

Speaker 39 Like him.

Speaker 3 The fact of the matter is, you stabbed Betsy.

Speaker 63 no, I did not.

Speaker 63 I wasn't even there.

Speaker 9 Russ.

Speaker 63 You were there. No, I found her like that when I came home.

Speaker 39 But Russ didn't know. How could he?

Speaker 83 That while investigators were grilling him, they were also talking to someone else.

Speaker 84 He's very degrading to her.

Speaker 84 And he makes comments about how much money he'll have after she's gone.

Speaker 55 It was a woman, a friend.

Speaker 84 He's got life insurance on her at work.

Speaker 84 She's got life insurance. You know, I'll be able to pay off the house.

Speaker 39 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 84 Just insensitive stuff, which would upset her, and she was tired of it.

Speaker 46 This was the woman who had driven Betsy home that early evening as the frost was gathering on the grass.

Speaker 58 And yes, she said she could tell them all kinds of things about Russ and Betsy Faria.

Speaker 86 Hey, can you state your last name for us, please?

Speaker 39 Hup, H-U-P-P.

Speaker 86 And your first name? Pam.

Speaker 60 Pam.

Speaker 38 Pam Hup.

Speaker 70 That's a name you need to remember.

Speaker 12 Pam Hup was about to take a lead role in what would become an epic case.

Speaker 84 When we come back, he'd start playing this game of putting a pillow over her face. This is what it's going to feel like when you die, and then act like he was kidding.

Speaker 11 And later, another 911 call from Pam herself.

Speaker 89 Hey, hello, there's someone someone breaking in my house. Help!

Speaker 90 It didn't sound right, it didn't smell right, it didn't taste right.

Speaker 12 A crazy plot about to unfold, starring someone impersonating us.

Speaker 39 She's like,

Speaker 21 Well, I'm from Datewine. I said, Okay,

Speaker 52 she's like, The TV show says, I've heard of it, I'm not stupid.

Speaker 29 A pall of post-Christmas grief settled over Betsy Faria's friends and family.

Speaker 91 Oh, they knew her mother knew she was going to die in a year or two or three of cancer.

Speaker 39 But murder?

Speaker 7 The way she died

Speaker 7 that was absolutely horrible and hard to visualize.

Speaker 42 And the police seemed to know who did it.

Speaker 60 They leaned hard on Russ.

Speaker 81 I did not stab my wife. I did not do it.

Speaker 25 Was Russ capable of such a thing?

Speaker 54 That first day, detectives asked Betsy's mother, and she said things had been, quote, great in the marriage.

Speaker 45 And Russ had been a thoughtful, devoted son-in-law.

Speaker 7 Russ had been very good to me all these years. So that's another reason this was also hard to take.
It's like losing two people.

Speaker 2 You were close to him.

Speaker 94 I was close to him. Like he was a son, in a way.

Speaker 96 But early on, investigators were also talking to Betsy's friend, Pam Hupp, the woman who drove her home night of the murder.

Speaker 86 Did Scribs get to your friendship as best friends?

Speaker 84 Betsy had a lot of best friends. Zillions of best friends.
But yes, I saw her almost every day, every other day.

Speaker 58 Pam said she'd known Betsy for a decade.

Speaker 56 They'd worked in insurance together.

Speaker 97 Both Pam Hupp and Betsy Faria worked for me.

Speaker 56 Worked for that insurance agent, Mike Boschert.

Speaker 54 Both women had been married twice and had two children each.

Speaker 97 Betsy was vivacious,

Speaker 97 full of energy, full of life, and just a really neat lady.

Speaker 62 What about Pam Hop?

Speaker 27 She was a right arm for my agency for a while.

Speaker 97 She was a fun, friendly, level-headed, intelligent person.

Speaker 85 And you trusted her.

Speaker 97 She was a good confidant.

Speaker 56 Which is just the way Pam was now impressing those detectives, as she told them she knew the inside story of Betsy's marriage.

Speaker 46 And Russ was not a good person.

Speaker 84 He's verbally mean to her. He is pompous.
He's a know-it-all. He smokes in the house, even though she's been sick and doesn't care.

Speaker 86 Sort of disrespectful.

Speaker 84 Oh, he's very disrespectful. She gets her feelings hurt a lot.
And she just doesn't care to be around him.

Speaker 95 Got so bad, said Pam, that Betsy was secretly planning to divorce him.

Speaker 36 Just a week or so before her death, Betsy and another friend had gone to Branson, Missouri, supposedly for fun, but, said Pam, they were actually plotting their escape.

Speaker 84 They had talked about moving down to Branson together and leaving their husbands. So last weekend, she wanted to go to Branson and talk about it and make a plan.

Speaker 72 That's certainly not how Russ described his marriage, though it had hardly been perfect, he admitted.

Speaker 66 We have a really good relationship, okay?

Speaker 62 No

Speaker 102 history of any kind of domestic violence between you or her or?

Speaker 66 We argued quite a bit quite a few years ago, about five years ago, six years ago, we were separated because we couldn't get alone.

Speaker 66 But there was no violence or anything involved.

Speaker 39 Who to believe?

Speaker 47 Russ or Pam?

Speaker 70 They tried a little test.

Speaker 39 Without telling Russ what Pam was saying, they asked him about her.

Speaker 61 She's a good person.

Speaker 63 She's very friendly.

Speaker 102 You don't think she'd have anything bad to say about you?

Speaker 24 No?

Speaker 56 The detectives pushed him.

Speaker 40 After all, if he was innocent, who else could have done it?

Speaker 56 Pam was the last person to have seen Betsy alive.

Speaker 66 The only person that would have been there would have been Pam.

Speaker 9 But I don't think Pam would do that.

Speaker 39 But she sure would and did tell stories on Russ.

Speaker 84 He'd start playing this game of putting a pillow over her face. to see what it would feel like.

Speaker 84 I don't know if she said, this is what it's going to feel like when you die or whatever, and then act like he was kidding. She was very upset.

Speaker 39 The detectives confronted Russ about that.

Speaker 99 You never put a pillow over her face.

Speaker 82 No, you know, this is what it till I had to die. No, why would her friends tell the police that she had done that and that she was scared of you?

Speaker 61 She had no reason to be scared of me. She'd never been scared of me.

Speaker 26 But once police looked at the crime scene, Pam Hopp's version of things seemed much more likely.

Speaker 58 They found Russ's slippers in his bedroom closet stained with Betsy's blood and her blood on the light switch in the bedroom must have been Russ with his bloody hands who put it there

Speaker 82 the fact of the matter is it's a sloppy crime scene there's blood on your clothes in your residence in your bedroom I didn't even go to my bedroom there's no one else that has any kind of motive monetary or

Speaker 52 Crime of action.

Speaker 81 I can't tell you what I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 64 They questioned Russ on and off for 48 hours.

Speaker 104 Then, their case not quite complete, they let him go.

Speaker 31 Did you kill your wife?

Speaker 24 No comment.

Speaker 69 Excuse me. No comment.

Speaker 25 The media was waiting.

Speaker 60 The story was all over town that Russ was the prime and only suspect.

Speaker 24 I'd like to say, get out of my face.

Speaker 102 And boy, this case has really been taking a lot of turns today.

Speaker 104 By the time they buried Betsy, Pam was spreading her opinions everywhere about Russ and Betsy and the murder.

Speaker 74 Russ's cousin Mary heard and was alarmed.

Speaker 10 So these red flags went off in my head. Well, wait a minute.
She's talking to the media, the only person talking to the media.

Speaker 29 And she's accusing Russ.

Speaker 10 And she's giving these details. She comes into

Speaker 10 the funeral home, pointing the finger at him.

Speaker 106 By the day after the funeral, Betsy's friends and family appeared to have taken a hard turn against Russ.

Speaker 54 They were remembering things a little more like Pam did.

Speaker 97 Many people would describe him as a pig.

Speaker 51 There was this anger in him that

Speaker 71 he could hide and he could put on a front.

Speaker 70 Could he?

Speaker 78 By Pam's reckoning, Betsy was afraid that last night.

Speaker 33 Afraid of what Russ might do.

Speaker 32 More than 50 stab wounds.

Speaker 33 Some rage indeed.

Speaker 39 Or a good facsimile.

Speaker 88 Coming up.

Speaker 12 Questions about Pam herself.

Speaker 43 Like, on the night of Betsy's murder, why did Pam drive her home?

Speaker 3 This was approximately 30 minutes out of Miss Hupp's way. I don't know why she offered to do it, because Betsy already had a right home from Russ.

Speaker 87 When dateline continues.

Speaker 11 A story is a powerful thing.

Speaker 35 And the thing about Pam was she understood that.

Speaker 73 Like the story she told the police had cast Russ Faria as a mean and greedy husband, just waiting for his wife Betsy to die of her cancer so he could get her life insurance.

Speaker 45 In fact, Pam told the detectives that Betsy was afraid Russ would waste it all on selfish spending.

Speaker 79 And since she trusted Pam,

Speaker 84 she said,

Speaker 84 I'm going to make you the beneficiary if you could, when my daughters are older,

Speaker 84 give them some money.

Speaker 84 I said, okay, well, how much is it for $150,000?

Speaker 49 So Betsy made Pam the beneficiary of a $150,000 life insurance policy.

Speaker 47 Was that what set off Russ's homicidal rage?

Speaker 47 The detective asked him in a roundabout way.

Speaker 102 Has she gotten any policies recently or done any changes on any policies recently?

Speaker 24 Not that I know of.

Speaker 48 Was he lying?

Speaker 91 Because clearly something ugly happened in the house that night.

Speaker 3 And you lost control.

Speaker 82 And I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what it was.

Speaker 101 Like perhaps finding out about that insurance switch.

Speaker 56 Anyway, they decided the important thing was he did it.

Speaker 32 And eight days after Betsy's death, they charged Russ with first-degree murder.

Speaker 26 Russ's cousin Mary found him an attorney, Joel Schwartz, one of the top criminal defense attorneys in St.

Speaker 29 Louis.

Speaker 31 Schwartz certainly knew the power of stories.

Speaker 67 and that the story making the rounds was bad for Russ Faria.

Speaker 26 But Russ didn't seem like a bad guy to Attorney Schwartz, and certainly not a killer.

Speaker 27 How well did you get to know Russ?

Speaker 3 I know Russ, I would consider

Speaker 24 very well.

Speaker 3 And my sense of Russ is Russ is a good person.

Speaker 3 Rough around the edges, but ultimately a good person.

Speaker 16 What do you mean rough around the edges?

Speaker 3 He's not going to be the most tactful person in the room. He's not going to be the most gracious person in the room.
But those aren't really the things that matter. What matters is what's inside.

Speaker 3 And when you get inside of Russ, he's a good person.

Speaker 40 So he dug into the story of Russ and Betsy and found not the story Pam told at all.

Speaker 58 Like the story Pam told the detectives that Betsy wanted Pam to get her life insurance and Betsy made the arrangements.

Speaker 84 She had me meet her at the library here in Winghaven. She was there already.
She filled out the form, signed it. We went up to the girl at the counter, showed our IDs, and she witnessed it.

Speaker 46 So Schwartz found that girl at the counter, and she said it wasn't like that at all.

Speaker 54 She said Pam was in charge.

Speaker 83 Pam did the talking, while Betsy stood back.

Speaker 91 That made it sound like it was Pam's idea.

Speaker 54 And remember how Pam told the police that Betsy and another friend went to Branson to secretly plan their respective divorces?

Speaker 96 Schwartz found that friend, too, Linda Hartman, and she said...

Speaker 5 Nope, not at all.

Speaker 72 They had no plan to leave their husbands.

Speaker 43 It was just the opposite.

Speaker 5 We went to the strips shopping and she was on, we were in the jelly bean store. She told me how they were Russ's favorite candy and they

Speaker 5 So Russ was on the phone and he was picking the ones that he liked. And when she got back home, they were going to eat those jelly beans together.

Speaker 72 But something was bothering Betsy that weekend, said Linda.

Speaker 5 She told me that she had to meet Pam. She didn't tell me what the meeting was about, but she kept on telling me that she didn't want to go to that meeting.

Speaker 31 And the one thing that girl at the library counter said she heard from Betsy was that she was divorcing her husband.

Speaker 58 Which, given what she just told Linda, didn't make sense.

Speaker 39 Unless...

Speaker 3 I think there was some form of pressure put on her. Betsy was not a person who would just do something like this without pressure from what I'm told and not tell her mother and not tell her sisters.

Speaker 37 Four days after the insurance change, Pam drove Betsy home and Betsy was murdered.

Speaker 49 So now Schwartz made a timeline.

Speaker 72 What else happened that last day?

Speaker 3 Betsy had chemotherapy scheduled that particular day.

Speaker 3 She received a text from Pam Hupp. Pam wanted to join her at chemo.

Speaker 3 And she texted back, I don't need a ride. My mother's friend, her name was Bobby, is in town and she's going to take me.
We need to spend some one-on-one time together.

Speaker 27 So in other words, stay away.

Speaker 3 In other words, don't come. One-on-one time to me means

Speaker 3 you're interrupting if you come. Nevertheless, Miss Hupp chose to join them at chemotherapy.

Speaker 3 After chemotherapy, Bobby took Betsy to dinner and then back to Betsy's mother's house.

Speaker 26 And that's where Pam picked her up to give her the unasked for ride home.

Speaker 3 Now, this was approximately 30 minutes out of Miss Hupp's way. I don't know why she offered to do it, because Betsy already had a ride home from Russ.

Speaker 3 They left Betsy's mother's house around 6:30 in the evening.

Speaker 56 They would have arrived at Betsy's place shortly after 7,

Speaker 43 after which cell phones helped tell the story of Betsy's time of death.

Speaker 3 At 7:04, there's a call from Pam's phone to Pam's husband.

Speaker 3 And in that call, Betsy gets on the phone, very much alive.

Speaker 55 But 17 minutes later?

Speaker 3 At 7:21, there's a call from Betsy's daughter, unanswered to Betsy. At 7.26, there's an unanswered call to Betsy.
At 7.27, there's a call from Pam Hupp's cell phone to Betsy's cell phone.

Speaker 47 Also unanswered.

Speaker 78 That call, Pam told the detectives, was to let Betsy know she was home safe.

Speaker 59 Except, said Schwartz, that wasn't possible.

Speaker 3 If you called your husband at 7.04 and the next call is at 7.27, it's impossible for you to have been home at that time.

Speaker 16 It's at least a half an hour's drive.

Speaker 3 It's at least a half an hour's drive. And she said she went inside for 10 to 15 minutes.
So she then said, Well, I was almost home.

Speaker 94 Where actually was she, based on the Saltara triangulation?

Speaker 3 At the very most, about three miles from the house. At the very least, she was still at the house.

Speaker 61 Betsy's house, that is, at the very time Schwartz calculated Betsy was being stabbed to death.

Speaker 25 A very different story, indeed.

Speaker 12 Coming up, Russ's game night buddies produce what sounds like a slam-dunk alibi.

Speaker 109 Once we heard the timeline, we knew that he could not have committed this crime.

Speaker 110 Impossible. It's impossible.

Speaker 111 A man cannot be in two places at the same time.

Speaker 59 Jury trials are, in a way, like theater.

Speaker 39 Everybody playing a part, based on strict rules of evidence, of course, and careful preparation.

Speaker 32 No different when Russ Faria went on trial for murder almost two years after Betsy's death.

Speaker 54 His attorney, Joel Schwartz, prepared to turn the tables and essentially put Pam on trial as a greedy woman who killed Betsy for her insurance.

Speaker 39 Well, the lead detective prepared Pam to counter that.

Speaker 112 They're going to suggest that you may have had something to do with the planning or the

Speaker 112 conspiracy to commit that murder because of your financial windfall.

Speaker 55 The detective reminded Pam she'd agreed to use the money to look after Betsy's two daughters.

Speaker 112 However, you now have this money and have not turned any of this money over to the family or the kids.

Speaker 16 That's crap.

Speaker 112 That's a huge problem.

Speaker 112 Because by your own volition, Betsy has told you that she wants you to hold on to this money to make sure that the family, the girls are taken care of, yet they haven't seen a dime of that money.

Speaker 100 So the detective gave Pam a little push.

Speaker 112 What are the possibilities of you getting that trust set up for the girls before the trial?

Speaker 22 100%.

Speaker 83 And a few days before the trial, she did indeed put two-thirds of the money into a trust fund for the girls.

Speaker 106 But it made no difference, at least to the jury, because the judge ruled that defense attorney Schwartz could not ask Pam anything about the insurance or point at her as the likely killer.

Speaker 72 After all, said the the judge, Pam wasn't on trial.

Speaker 16 And I couldn't get into any of that.

Speaker 3 I've never seen anything like it.

Speaker 43 But of course, the jury did see pictures of the multiple stab wounds.

Speaker 32 Evidence said the prosecutor Leah Askey of Russ's rage.

Speaker 58 She showed them Russ's slippers, the slippers police found in his bedroom closet, stained in Betsy's blood, and her blood smudged on the bedroom light switch.

Speaker 39 And most devious, said the prosecutor, was Russ's alibi.

Speaker 73 His fake alibi she argued russ actually killed betsy during the time he said he was at his weekly game night

Speaker 108 a claim that was both impossible and an outrage said schwartz she proved nothing

Speaker 3 everything she did is merely a guess and conjecture in my opinion the innocent man got charged with murder and then it sort of snowball from there

Speaker 91 Thing was, said Schwartz, Russ had one of the best alibis he'd ever seen.

Speaker 47 All four of Russ's game night friends testified that they were were with Russ, miles and miles from his house, night of the murder.

Speaker 79 They watched movies, 6 p.m.

Speaker 47 to 9 p.m., at this man's house, Michael Corbyn.

Speaker 111 We were all within eight feet of each other the whole night.

Speaker 54 Did he act the same as usual?

Speaker 41 And you said...

Speaker 111 You know, I looked over at him and he was dozed off for a second, but again, I didn't think anything weird of this.

Speaker 47 And then Russ left at 9, stopped at Arby's, got home just before 9.40, saw his wife on the floor, and called 911.

Speaker 109 Once we heard the timeline, we knew that he could not have committed this crime.

Speaker 110 Impossible. It's impossible.

Speaker 109 A man cannot be in two places at the same time.

Speaker 43 Attorney Schwartz pointed out, too, that rigor mortis had begun before the first responders arrived, meaning Betsy had been dead for a couple of hours by then.

Speaker 56 Probably died just after 7, about the time Pam dropped Betsy off at home and before the 7.21 call she didn't answer.

Speaker 95 And all those stab wounds Bendy inflicted after Betsy was already dead looked suspiciously deliberate, said Schwartz.

Speaker 46 Methodical.

Speaker 94 As if somebody killed her and then afterwards went about the business of making it look as if somebody had been slashing her.

Speaker 3 Not as if somebody did that.

Speaker 3 There's no other explanation for the lack of blood, and there's no other explanation for the deep cut on her wrist. That's post-mortem.

Speaker 78 But how to explain Betsy's blood on Russ's slippers in his closet.

Speaker 34 Easy, said Schwartz.

Speaker 3 There was no imprint of a shoe in the blood, nor was there any footprint anywhere on the tile floor leading back to where the slippers were found.

Speaker 94 So how would the blood get on the shoes?

Speaker 3 Somebody attempted to

Speaker 3 stage this. Dipped it in the blood? Dipped it in the blood and hid those back in the closet.

Speaker 47 Schwartz was quite sure, in fact, that Pam planned it all.

Speaker 72 that she conned Betsy into signing that insurance transfer, then killed her for the money, and promptly set about framing Russ.

Speaker 10 Even though, said Cousin Mary, there was nothing showing he did it, but there was everything showing he didn't, and somebody else did this.

Speaker 100 But remember, the judge had ruled Schwartz couldn't bring up virtually any of that in front of the jury.

Speaker 91 Still, based on Russ's alibi alone, Schwartz was confident there'd be an acquittal.

Speaker 47 Except, that's not what happened.

Speaker 33 The verdict was guilty.

Speaker 3 I can't imagine how this jury deliberated and convicted. The worst part of it was looking at Russ's face.
He was in shock. He couldn't believe it.

Speaker 3 And I haven't lost sleep in a long time over something in this business. And I lost sleep for a long time.

Speaker 88 Coming up.

Speaker 12 Pam said she'd keep Betsy's life insurance payout for her daughters.

Speaker 30 Did she? She funded the trust so that during the trial, it would look like she had given all this money to the kids. After the trial, she took it all back again.

Speaker 13 That's correct.

Speaker 70 Wow.

Speaker 87 When dateline continues.

Speaker 26 Joel Schwartz was an unhappy man.

Speaker 40 A client he was sure was innocent was in prison for life.

Speaker 73 Well, the person he thought was the real killer, Pam Hopp, walked free.

Speaker 41 And there didn't seem to be much he he could do about it.

Speaker 3 It was what I would consider travesty of justice.

Speaker 72 Russ was in prison when we met him February 2014.

Speaker 113 I just want to declare you know again my innocence. You know I'm innocent of this.

Speaker 113 I can't imagine ever being mad enough to do anything like that to anybody, let alone my wife whom I love.

Speaker 56 But none of Schwartz's arguments or Russ's denials persuaded Betsy's family, especially her mother, who once thought of Russ as a son.

Speaker 94 If somebody were to come to you with evidence, strong evidence, that it wasn't Russ, but it was some other person,

Speaker 2 is that something that you could explain?

Speaker 7 I would still feel it's Russ, 100%.

Speaker 74 Then, a few months later, Joel Schwartz heard a bit of news.

Speaker 36 Pam was caught up in another legal case.

Speaker 54 Betsy's daughters had filed a lawsuit against her demanding that insurance money.

Speaker 39 Weird.

Speaker 64 Hadn't Pam put the money into a trust for them just before Russ's trial?

Speaker 60 Here's Pam's civil trial deposition.

Speaker 76 Why did you put the money into this trust account?

Speaker 22 Because I felt I was pressured to fill that account with that money from the

Speaker 51 prosecuting side and from her family.

Speaker 15 But what do you know?

Speaker 64 Right after Russ's trial, she defunded the trust and took the money back for herself.

Speaker 30 She funded the trust so that during the trial, it would look like she had given all this money to the kids. That's exactly correct.
After the trial, she took it all back again.

Speaker 27 That's correct.

Speaker 24 Wow.

Speaker 16 What did you think when you heard that?

Speaker 3 I never doubted that that was her motive in the first place, so nothing surprised me. However, that in and of itself is something that the Court of Appeals needed to hear about.

Speaker 83 That is the fact that Pam hoodwinked everybody.

Speaker 104 This said Schwartz was by legal definition important new evidence, which the jury never got to hear.

Speaker 54 So it was a long shot, but he filed a special motion asking for a hearing.

Speaker 56 And against all odds, it was granted.

Speaker 83 Then, just before that hearing, the Lincoln County prosecutor, Leah Askey, met with Pam.

Speaker 51 So what are our chances of

Speaker 51 making the judge believe us?

Speaker 49 By this time, Pam and the prosecutor sounded like old friends,

Speaker 79 having an unguarded conversation, during which they agreed that attorney Schwartz was a sore loser, wasting everybody's time and money.

Speaker 51 Feelings hurt as they lost.

Speaker 24 He's used to losing.

Speaker 51 Right.

Speaker 4 And so that's really what it's about.

Speaker 51 In my opinion, that's what it's about. So to me, it's doing a disservice to the taxpayers and citizens here.

Speaker 49 In any case, on a June morning in 2015, a year and a half after Russ was convicted, they all assembled before a different judge for the hearing.

Speaker 24 And after?

Speaker 55 The judge said Pam's manipulation of that insurance money was indeed significant new evidence.

Speaker 93 If jurors had heard that, they might have ruled differently.

Speaker 104 He overturned Russ's conviction.

Speaker 31 and ordered a new trial.

Speaker 113 It was one of the best moments of my life.

Speaker 113 Finally, something

Speaker 113 good in my favor.

Speaker 30 It's like light streaming in suddenly from the sky or something.

Speaker 113 You finally really see the light at the end of the tunnel at that point.

Speaker 66 I was just trying to call you.

Speaker 43 Russ Faria was released on bond.

Speaker 3 Here's the Russ!

Speaker 24 You ready? Freedom forever, baby!

Speaker 6 Woo!

Speaker 105 Russ's new trial was set for November 2015.

Speaker 50 To prepare, detectives interviewed Pam again.

Speaker 49 And Pam's story seemed to shift.

Speaker 72 Here was Pam.

Speaker 77 This was just the day after the murder, declining to directly accuse Russ.

Speaker 86 Think Russ could have done this?

Speaker 84 I don't know him well enough.

Speaker 91 But in this new interview?

Speaker 115 When you very first learned Betsy was stabbed to death, what name went through your mind?

Speaker 84 Oh, Russ.

Speaker 66 Why?

Speaker 84 Because he's a.

Speaker 84 He was a to her.

Speaker 93 First interview on her relationship with Betsy.

Speaker 86 Did you describe herself to your friendship as best friends?

Speaker 84 Um, Betsy had a lot of best friends.

Speaker 70 New interview.

Speaker 78 Same question.

Speaker 84 I knew the most intimate of intimate of family stuff from her.

Speaker 72 Intimate?

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 50 In this brand new story, Pam cast herself not just as Betsy's friend, but as Betsy's lover.

Speaker 116 That replaced what a husband would be.

Speaker 84 It's honestly a relationship with two women who really aren't attracted to women. I don't know how to explain that.
It's not, I'm attracted to men. Love everything about them.

Speaker 84 Can't wait till Magic Mike XL comes out.

Speaker 116 But

Speaker 84 she's the same way.

Speaker 116 It's not like she was a lesbian or anything.

Speaker 84 It wasn't like it was such an evolution of emotional trauma for her.

Speaker 16 I don't believe it.

Speaker 3 Nor did anybody else who knows Betsy. And frankly, the people we spoke to who knew Pam Hupp.
Nobody bought it. It just was

Speaker 3 an excuse for Betsy to have given her the money.

Speaker 57 That is Betsy's life insurance.

Speaker 109 And as if that wasn't quite enough, Pam offered more new stories.

Speaker 72 In her first interview, when asked about Russ, I mean, he seems nice enough.

Speaker 84 I just don't know him that well.

Speaker 72 But now,

Speaker 25 such a tale.

Speaker 84 Pushed me up against the wall and he said,

Speaker 84 never come over here again. He was all red faced.

Speaker 116 Oh, he's like, talk about this far away from a face? Yeah, he was right there. I could feel his spit.

Speaker 116 Nasty. And he said, you two

Speaker 84 thumpers, something to that effect.

Speaker 116 If I ever catch you together again, I'll bury you out in the backyard.

Speaker 98 And then, on tape, the detectives tried out for Pam their theory of events immediately preceding the murder.

Speaker 39 What we believe may have happened

Speaker 115 is that Russ walked in and

Speaker 115 saw you there. Did you see Russ that night? No.

Speaker 84 In that house. I did not see Russ in that house.

Speaker 59 So much for that theory.

Speaker 39 Or was it?

Speaker 72 Because four months later, Pam suddenly recovered a memory.

Speaker 31 That when she left Betsy's house, she saw a car just down the street.

Speaker 40 Two men inside.

Speaker 115 And you think you recognized one of those men?

Speaker 39 I do.

Speaker 84 Yes.

Speaker 115 How do you believe that person was?

Speaker 116 I believe it was Russ.

Speaker 40 Yes, Pam had brand new stories for her detective friends.

Speaker 95 But she had something else, too.

Speaker 68 Something more persuasive than her shifting memories.

Speaker 70 She had evidence.

Speaker 88 Coming up.

Speaker 87 A letter addressed to Pam found on Betsy's laptop.

Speaker 2 What did it say?

Speaker 3 I'm scared to go home. I'm scared of Russ.

Speaker 59 Russ Faria was a nervous man.

Speaker 113 I was convicted once when I didn't think I would be, so

Speaker 113 there's always that possibility of it happening again.

Speaker 58 This time, there'd be no jury.

Speaker 55 Russ would like to trial by judge alone.

Speaker 45 And at least he knew, as he prepared for his second trial before that new judge, that attorney Joel Schwartz would get to point the finger at Pam as Betsy's killer.

Speaker 113 The last time, it was like he was a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. There was really no way for him to win because the judge wouldn't let him fight.

Speaker 113 This time, it was kind of the other way around. The judge was just...

Speaker 101 There as a referee, and he wanted to hear every piece of evidence from both sides.

Speaker 58 But before Schwartz could make his case, Prosecutor Leah Askey was ready with new evidence, like an officer saying that on the night of the murder, he saw water droplets in the master bathtub, implying that Russ cleaned up after killing Betsy.

Speaker 3 This officer coming up with this

Speaker 3 evidence three and a half years after the fact and allegedly remembering something as minute of a detail as water droplets in a tub is deeply troubling.

Speaker 3 There was never a report on this, and frankly, I don't believe it.

Speaker 56 Schwartz was pretty sure he could swat away that claim.

Speaker 33 But then, just days before the new trial began, the prosecution found the mother load on Betsy's laptop, a proverbial smoking gun.

Speaker 35 It was a letter, never sent, but addressed to Pam.

Speaker 36 The prosecutor called it Betsy's dying declaration.

Speaker 2 What did it say?

Speaker 3 I'm scared to go home. I'm scared of Russ.

Speaker 3 He started started putting a pillow over my face saying, this is what it feels like when you die. I want to give you the insurance money.

Speaker 32 The letter ended with, if something happens to me, would you please show this to the police?

Speaker 29 When you got it, what did you think?

Speaker 3 I would say the initial reaction was,

Speaker 3 this is troubling.

Speaker 95 Pam had mentioned this letter to detectives just after Betsy's murder.

Speaker 84 She was at tennis last week

Speaker 84 and she said she typed me an email. Maybe if you guys can find that letter she was going to send me.

Speaker 98 But no one had found the letter until now.

Speaker 46 So Schwartz hired a computer expert to conduct an analysis.

Speaker 3 It turns out that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for Betsy to have written this the way it came up in their computer.

Speaker 62 Why would you say that?

Speaker 3 It was the only unauthored document out of approximately 250 documents contained within the computer.

Speaker 39 Meaning?

Speaker 56 It was likely composed on a different computer and then transferred to Betsy's laptop, time stamped at a moment when Betsy happened to be playing tennis.

Speaker 39 So,

Speaker 39 who wrote it?

Speaker 3 Miss Huck knew what computer it was in, where on the computer it was, as well as when it was created.

Speaker 72 But get this, the letter was loaded onto Betsy's laptop the day before Pam became the beneficiary of Betsy's life insurance policy, five days before the murder.

Speaker 54 It had to be part of her plot, said Schwartz, to frame Russ for Betsy's murder.

Speaker 3 It's likely to believe that that person deliberated coolly as to what they were going to do to Betsy and when they would do it, knowing where Russ would be at the time.

Speaker 40 Of course, his regular Tuesday game night.

Speaker 59 Schwartz told the judge that the evidence proved Russ could not have killed Betsy.

Speaker 58 And without saying so directly, he strongly implied Pam most likely did.

Speaker 32 And that Pam was a true con artist, that she, not Betsy, wrote that dying declaration, that she lied again and again about Russ and his relationship with Betsy, that having murdered Betsy, she launched her plan to frame Russ, and that she did it all for money, the insurance.

Speaker 55 But would the judge see that too?

Speaker 77 He retired to deliberate.

Speaker 98 And three hours later.

Speaker 113 We heard the judge was getting ready to come back in. I'm sure I was holding my breath, you know, and just standing as straight as I could and paying focused in on the judge.
And finally,

Speaker 113 it seemed like an eternity.

Speaker 58 And then the judge said the magic words.

Speaker 113 I find you not guilty, like a heavy weight lifted off my shoulders.

Speaker 32 The judge condemned the investigation as rather disturbing, said it raised more questions than answers.

Speaker 45 The prosecutor made her opinion about Russ's guilt quite clear when she declined to reopen the investigation into Betsy's murder.

Speaker 113 I really do hope that somebody picks the case back up and opens up the investigation because

Speaker 113 there's still somebody out there

Speaker 113 that is walking around that killed my wife.

Speaker 72 Oh, but this thing with Pam wasn't over.

Speaker 39 Oh, no.

Speaker 58 Remember that lawsuit with Betsy's daughters over the insurance?

Speaker 54 That certainly gave a good look at Pam.

Speaker 58 Like this off-the-wall outburst when an opposing lawyer asked her a question.

Speaker 24 What was your reason? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What was your answer? Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 62 I direct the court.

Speaker 22 I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 32 When the daughter's lawyers tried to pin her down about her lies.

Speaker 85 Who else might you have lied to?

Speaker 22 Anybody that would bug me and bug me and bug me and bug me.

Speaker 25 Even her own attorney had to concede that point.

Speaker 27 I'm not going to argue about her credibility.

Speaker 30 She's not a credible witness, but that's not the issue.

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 40 Apparently, that wasn't the issue.

Speaker 92 Betsy's daughters lost their lawsuit against Pam.

Speaker 56 She got to keep Betsy's $150,000 of life insurance, all of it, because

Speaker 57 all the papers were in order.

Speaker 91 No hard proof Betsy wanted the girls to get the money.

Speaker 26 Pam was all smiles as she left the courthouse and walked past our camera and said,

Speaker 15 Say hi to Kathy?

Speaker 26 Kathy happened to be our dateline producer,

Speaker 68 which is something you might want to keep in mind.

Speaker 56 After all, this was January 2016.

Speaker 95 New Year was just beginning.

Speaker 89 911, where's your emergency?

Speaker 89 Hey, hello, there's someone breaking in my house. Help.

Speaker 87 Coming up, an alarming 911 call from Pam.

Speaker 12 Her story of an intruder with a note.

Speaker 90 The note specifically said, get Russ's money.

Speaker 12 In our startling second hour, Russ Faria's brand new nightmare.

Speaker 10 He said, well, they think I'm involved.

Speaker 87 When dateline continues.

Speaker 1 A mochi moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying.

Speaker 1 This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1. He understood and I felt supported, not judged.

Speaker 1 I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Speaker 5 Thanks, Sadie.

Speaker 1 I'm Myra Ammeth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 4 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 24 A BetterHelp ad.

Speaker 18 This November, BetterHelp is encouraging people to reach out, grab lunch with an old friend, call your parents, or even find support in therapy.

Speaker 18 BetterHelp makes it easy with its therapist match commitment and over 12 years of online therapy experience, matching members with qualified professionals.

Speaker 18 And just like that lunch with an old friend, once you do reach out, you'll wonder, why didn't I do this sooner? Start now at betterhelp.com for 10% off your first month.

Speaker 117 On the night before Halloween in 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was murdered, but police failed to make an arrest. Until, in 2000, her one-time neighbor, Michael Skakal, was arrested.

Speaker 117 He was also a cousin of the Kennedys. The Kennedy connection is the reason that most people know about this case.
But the deeper I dug, the more I came to question everything I thought I knew.

Speaker 117 Search Dead Certain the Martha Moxley Murder on Spotify to listen to the latest episodes each week.

Speaker 12 And now, a stunning new twist in tonight's date line as someone tries to impersonate us.

Speaker 21 She's like, well, I'm from Dateline. I said, okay.

Speaker 20 She's like, the TV show says, I've heard of it. I'm not stupid.

Speaker 12 Earlier in our story, Russ Faria was convicted of murdering his wife, Betsy, thanks partly to what Betsy's friend, Pam Hupp, told investigators.

Speaker 84 He makes comments about how much money he'll have after she's gone.

Speaker 12 That conviction has been overturned. But now, police are about to hear from Pam again in a 911 call.

Speaker 89 Hey, hello, there's someone breaking in my house.

Speaker 31 Help!

Speaker 12 Her bizarre story.

Speaker 14 The other bitch, you hope we're going to the bank for getting Russ's money.

Speaker 12 Russ's money, a dark new scheme about to come to light.

Speaker 16 Here again is Keith Morrison.

Speaker 44 You would think, wouldn't you, that our story was just about over?

Speaker 58 Russ Farrillo is finally a free and vindicated man, and remarkably given all that happened, accepting.

Speaker 118 I've been just trying to assume a normal life again, really.

Speaker 31 Well, it does disrupt a life for a long period of time, I think, like this.

Speaker 118 Well, it'll affect you for the rest of your life, but the way that I look at it is, you know, the best thing I can do is to not be bitter about anything.

Speaker 118 So I appreciate my time with my friends and my family and just to be out by myself.

Speaker 69 But over?

Speaker 70 Oh, no.

Speaker 108 You should know, by the way, there are people we meet who try a little manipulation, or lie, if you will.

Speaker 34 Pretty standard stuff.

Speaker 29 But what happened next here in the St.

Speaker 32 Louis suburbs?

Speaker 39 Hard to believe.

Speaker 73 It was August 16th, 2016.

Speaker 93 O'Fallon, Missouri.

Speaker 58 It was midday hot, muggy.

Speaker 89 911, where's your emergency? Hey, hello, there's someone breaking in my house. Help!

Speaker 53 What's the address here at? Hello? Can you give you what we teach your wife?

Speaker 89 No, I'm not getting in the car with you. No, wait a minute.

Speaker 9 drive.

Speaker 39 The woman on the phone was Pam Hupp.

Speaker 47 And moments later, the man you heard briefly in the background was dead.

Speaker 78 And in short order, Pam was sitting with police trying to explain that she had no choice.

Speaker 39 That man, whoever he was, attacked her while she sat in her own car, in her own driveway.

Speaker 25 And obviously...

Speaker 59 He'd been brought here to kill her.

Speaker 14 A car came down really fast on the cross street and whipped around right in front of my driveway and I looked up because it was so fast and startling and somebody jumped out and opened up the door and jumped in my car.

Speaker 14 I think I was like who are you?

Speaker 14 Get out of my car blah blah blah and he was like bitch we're going to the bank and I'm like I'm not going to the bank with you get out of my car and he goes bitch he goes we're going to the bank we're getting Russ's money and Russ's money.

Speaker 78 That's when the man pulled out the knife, she said, held it to her throat, kept yelling.

Speaker 14 And my thought was to get the knife away and get the heck out of the car. That's all I was thinking about at that point.

Speaker 59 Somehow, said Pam, she was able to knock the knife out of the man's hand.

Speaker 56 Then she jumped out of her car, ran into her house, the man in hot pursuit.

Speaker 14 He was yelling stuff. None of it made any sense, but he did keep saying, get in the car.
I ran in the bedroom, turned around, got my gun, and I stand right there, and he was pounding on the door.

Speaker 14 And once it flew open,

Speaker 53 that's when I shot him.

Speaker 14 And I just kept shooting him because he just kept standing there.

Speaker 37 How many times did you say you pulled the driver?

Speaker 14 I unloaded the Hokan.

Speaker 14 I just kept pulling until it stopped.

Speaker 15 Clear as day, you can hear the gunshots on the 911 tape as Pam killed her intruder.

Speaker 59 As Pam told that story, The unidentified man was lying dead in her house.

Speaker 39 But who brought him?

Speaker 25 They asked.

Speaker 39 Did she see who dropped her attacker off at her driveway?

Speaker 82 What was the most distinctive thing about the driver that you remember?

Speaker 14 Dark hair was kind of like a buzz cut

Speaker 14 and dark skin.

Speaker 39 Which sounded a lot like Russ Faria.

Speaker 44 Now that would be some twist in this bizarre saga.

Speaker 85 This whole street was kind of a zoo when you got here.

Speaker 24 It was.

Speaker 29 A sizable crowd had gathered outside Pam's place by the time Lieutenant Brian Hilkey arrived.

Speaker 85 Did you know initially as you came up here who you were dealing with?

Speaker 90 Initially when the call came in it was reported as a Pam Huff.

Speaker 24 Huffs. Huff.

Speaker 90 Fs. Yes.
So originally there was no tie-in, no aha moment until we got here and somebody clarified that it was the Pam Huff.

Speaker 76 This was well enough known that it was the Pam Huff?

Speaker 90 Yeah. As we were going around doing our canvas talking to all these neighbors a lot of them whispered, You know who that is, right? That's Pam Huff.

Speaker 29 What do you think?

Speaker 90 I knew at that point that it it was going to be a media circus, that there was going to be a lot of scrutiny on the case, a lot of high-profile people wanting to know what was going on, and I knew we had to do it right.

Speaker 55 With Pam safely in the care of the police, Hilkey took a good look at the crime scene.

Speaker 85 What was inside when you got there?

Speaker 90 Immediately upon entering through the garage, there is a garage door that leads into the house. That's where the gentleman was that had been shot, laying right there.

Speaker 67 The man had no identification on him, but there was a note in his pocket.

Speaker 54 It said, get Hup in car, take the bank.

Speaker 90 The note specifically said, get Russ's money.

Speaker 54 Should be $100,000 to $150,000.

Speaker 48 Take Hup back to house.

Speaker 90 And then dispose of her.

Speaker 54 Make it look like Russ's wife.

Speaker 36 Make sure a knife is sticking out of the neck.

Speaker 90 It gave instructions of where to take the money, which ended up being Russ Faria's mother's house.

Speaker 72 Also in the man's pocket.

Speaker 90 Nine $100 $100 bills.

Speaker 64 Had Pam Hup on that steamy suburban afternoon foiled a crude homicidal plot by Russ Faria?

Speaker 78 An attempt to get back Betsy's insurance money and then kill Pam?

Speaker 49 Maybe he was the true villain behind the whole story.

Speaker 92 With live cameras trained on Pam Hup's driveway, the city waited for answers.

Speaker 12 Coming up, investigators would start at the beginning with Pam's 911 call.

Speaker 89 No, I'm not getting in the car with you.

Speaker 53 No, right away.

Speaker 90 It didn't sound right. It didn't smell right.
It didn't taste right.

Speaker 103 By late afternoon, it seemed all of St.

Speaker 15 Louis was watching.

Speaker 92 We're looking to do a complete and thorough investigation of this.

Speaker 45 This being the shooting, Pam's claim of self-defense, and her accusation that seemed to implicate Russ Faria.

Speaker 57 So maybe he was the killer all along.

Speaker 36 And soon, Russ's cousin Mary answered the phone, and there he was, asking for help.

Speaker 119 He asked me if I could go with him to the police department.

Speaker 24 I'm like, well, why?

Speaker 10 He says, well, they think I'm involved. What? And I was like, well, what do you mean they think you're involved? Well, she's pointing the finger at me.

Speaker 10 Well, now I'm starting to panic.

Speaker 42 It was a different police force this time.

Speaker 30 Did they ask you some pointed questions?

Speaker 57 They did.

Speaker 59 He gave handwriting samples, DNA, fingerprints. Mr.

Speaker 90 Faria was very cooperative. His attorney was very cooperative.
In fact, I think they were anxious to speak with us. They gave us a statement.
We were able to establish and confirm his alibi.

Speaker 59 So, Russ was not behind what happened.

Speaker 39 So, who was?

Speaker 93 What did happen?

Speaker 89 Hey, hello, there's someone break in in my house. Help!

Speaker 45 Lieutenant Hilke and cyber forensics expert Larry McClain started with Pam's 911 call.

Speaker 90 Just listening to it, it didn't sound right. It didn't smell right, it didn't taste right.

Speaker 114 We listened to it over and over. It just sounded like

Speaker 114 somebody stage acting poorly.

Speaker 90 Most people don't realize that before you get picked up by dispatch, your call is being recorded and it's complete silence.

Speaker 90 If there was a struggle, if somebody was trying to kick the door in, push the door in, threaten her, we should have been able to hear all that.

Speaker 90 And there's no sound, no communication until the operator says, 911, what's your emergency?

Speaker 90 And then it's like action.

Speaker 64 And Charles County, prosecuting attorney, Tim Lomar, had a listen too.

Speaker 13 You don't hear the panic or the tension in her voice. It sounded so so scripted.
Not just what she said, but what the man said.

Speaker 89 Getting to you will receive your wife. No, I'm not getting in the car with you.
No, right away.

Speaker 59 Oh, but it wasn't just the 911 call.

Speaker 35 They encountered strange things at Pam's house.

Speaker 49 Remember that story Pam told about the struggle in the car where she knocked the knife out of the man's hand?

Speaker 90 We located this knife. that was almost appeared to be perfectly placed between the center council and the passenger passenger seat.

Speaker 90 What is also interesting is when you go into her residence, suspiciously, the way she stored her kitchen knives were between the counter and the oven.

Speaker 90 Blade down in the left.

Speaker 76 Yeah, just like it was between the CS and the center console.

Speaker 114 Again. Not flung to the side because she said she batted it out of his hand.
But it wasn't laying on the floorboard flung to the side.

Speaker 114 It was simply stored between the seat and the cushion, just like in the kitchen.

Speaker 59 And when they dusted that knife for Prince?

Speaker 90 The only fingerprint that was on the knife was the man that attacked her and it was almost like it was touched like this. That's where we located his fingerprint.

Speaker 27 And only there?

Speaker 90 Only there. Not on the handle, only on the blade.

Speaker 59 And then they dug around and discovered it appeared Pam herself bought that knife, or one exactly like it, at this Dollar Tree store.

Speaker 48 And this was weird.

Speaker 47 Inside Pam's house, under the dead man's body, there was an extra layer of carpet on the floor.

Speaker 90 It was almost like this piece of carpet was placed there on purpose. Where was it? Right outside the bedroom, between the garage door and the bedroom door.

Speaker 90 And it appeared that somebody might have not wanted to get blood on their actual carpet.

Speaker 57 Investigators searched Pam's bedroom, too, and found some cash, including a $100 bill linked by serial numbers to some of the cash in the dead man's pocket.

Speaker 28 As if somebody went to the bank, got a whole bunch of $100 bills, and they were all in sequence.

Speaker 24 Yes.

Speaker 114 The chances of that happening in a vacuum, if you will, are

Speaker 16 you right, astronomical?

Speaker 25 But the urgent question, who was the guy Pam shot to death?

Speaker 105 With no idea on him, they sent his prints out for a database comparison.

Speaker 114 The fingerprints come back and they announced the name.

Speaker 83 His name was Lewis Gumpenberger.

Speaker 54 He was 33 years old and lived with his mother in an apartment complex 13 miles from Pam's house.

Speaker 114 My research found some information that the suspect had been in an automobile accident, had a traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 114 Based on what I was reading, this person was incapable of functioning at a level to do what was being purported that he had done.

Speaker 90 Obviously, one of the things we wanted to do is speak with the mother because we needed to make death notification and get some background.

Speaker 13 And in fact another agency was contacted by his mother and she let them know that he was missing.

Speaker 72 She also told police more about her son.

Speaker 90 Not only did he not have the mental capacity to perform a ransom kidnapping murder for hire, but he was also physically unable to do

Speaker 90 even basic things such as running.

Speaker 15 Wow, he really was incapacitated. Yes.

Speaker 27 And Lewis Gumpenberger, therefore, was not a perpetrator.

Speaker 24 He was a victim.

Speaker 13 Correct.

Speaker 25 No way Pam's story could be true.

Speaker 105 But how did these two come into contact?

Speaker 72 How did Lewis wind up at Pam Hupp's house?

Speaker 39 When you hear that, a scheme low and cruel and so devious, it caught us completely off guard.

Speaker 87 Coming up, someone's running around around impersonating us.

Speaker 21 She's like, well, I'm from Dateline.

Speaker 14 I said, okay, she's like the TV show.

Speaker 20 I said, I've heard of it. I'm not stupid.

Speaker 87 Who is she and what does she want when Dateline continues?

Speaker 38 Murder investigations are so often achingly slow.

Speaker 46 Can take months, years.

Speaker 64 But not after the shooting at Pam Hopp's house.

Speaker 95 That was different.

Speaker 13 It seemed like each and every day, a new lead developed.

Speaker 24 This was going very quickly.

Speaker 23 Very quickly.

Speaker 38 And very early on.

Speaker 90 We received a call from St. Charles County Police that they had some very important and valuable information for us.

Speaker 36 Oh, yes, they certainly did.

Speaker 56 Six days before Lewis was shot, they got a call from this woman. I'm yes, my name is Carol Alford.

Speaker 31 Her name was Carol Alford and her story.

Speaker 104 Just one more thing you couldn't make up.

Speaker 57 So, of course, they brought Carol in.

Speaker 3 Everyone have seatbelt there.

Speaker 59 It happened right outside her house, she said.

Speaker 55 She was with her dog, and this woman pulled up in an SUV, and this was bizarre.

Speaker 14 She's like,

Speaker 21 well, I'm from Dayline. I said, okay.

Speaker 20 She's like, the TV show said, I've heard of it. I'm not stupid.

Speaker 54 The woman also claimed to be from Chicago, said Carol.

Speaker 24 And then later she added, the woman said her name was Kathy, just like the producer of this very story.

Speaker 20 She's like, I'd like to offer you the opportunity to record a soundbite for Dateline for $1,000, cash, no taxes, so there's no pay for trail, Uncle Sam.

Speaker 20 I said, really?

Speaker 20 She says, yeah.

Speaker 35 Just an aside, by the way, we don't pay for sound bites or interviews.

Speaker 104 We just don't.

Speaker 32 Carol said she knew that.

Speaker 26 And while she is naturally a skeptical person, she told us she was also curious.

Speaker 108 So she agreed.

Speaker 119 Took the dog in the house.

Speaker 119 And as I was walking up the stairs, she says, by the way, if you help us, you can't bring your keys, your wallet, your cigarettes, or your cell phone because the producer doesn't like clutter.

Speaker 39 Okay,

Speaker 55 strange, but she complied, got in the car.

Speaker 45 even though her spidey sense was tingling.

Speaker 95 And then the woman started driving driving in a direction that just didn't seem right.

Speaker 119 And that's when I was like, okay, I probably ought to get out of this car. And that's when I told her I needed to take me back to,

Speaker 119 you know, lock my door and get my shoes.

Speaker 72 So they returned.

Speaker 58 She hopped out, told the woman, sorry, count me out.

Speaker 119 And she's like, well, if I come back in an hour, will you help me? And I'm like, yeah, lady, I gotta go.

Speaker 119 Then I called the dispatch line for the cops and I told them, like, yum, I wanna check this chick out.

Speaker 77 Carol gave the police a description of the woman.

Speaker 20 All I saw was her big white teeth, her stupid smile, her short blonde hair, and her black SUV with her blue shirt on.

Speaker 17 She was short, chunky.

Speaker 119 The look on her face, she had a permanent, like, grin smile, like she was just weird.

Speaker 46 Smirk. Yeah.

Speaker 93 And when detectives showed Carol a photo lineup,

Speaker 35 she was confident.

Speaker 9 Okay, yeah.

Speaker 20 At first, the one before that one caught my eye because of the blue shirt, but it's a cute.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 39 Fascinating tale in a she-said-she-said sort of way.

Speaker 39 Except,

Speaker 39 as you may have noticed, Carol had cameras on her house, and one of them got a good look at the woman's license plate.

Speaker 49 Pam Hopp's license plate.

Speaker 72 Now, they were getting somewhere.

Speaker 64 And then they heard from this guy, Brent Charlton.

Speaker 75 I was by myself that day, just mowing the grass. Yeah, when I noticed a car was stopped in front of the lot.

Speaker 24 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 75 She stopped and talked to me and told me that she

Speaker 75 was trying to do a reenactment for Dayton, that she worked for Dayline.

Speaker 64 He said the woman offered him $1,000.

Speaker 93 He refused.

Speaker 98 He got a weird vibe from her, he said.

Speaker 55 And besides, he had to work.

Speaker 39 But it was pretty obvious Pam was using our identity to troll for a victim.

Speaker 55 She must have used the very same ruse to pick up the vulnerable Louis Gumpenberger.

Speaker 68 But to prove that was going to take more than speculation.

Speaker 83 So, Detective McClain submitted an emergency search warrant to Google requesting a location history for Pam's phone, including on the day Lewis was killed.

Speaker 114 When the search warrant material came back, I'm sitting in this lab.

Speaker 114 I'm in a dark room surrounded by screens, and I get the data and I pull it into

Speaker 16 Google Earth to plot it.

Speaker 105 And up pop dozens of tiny pins.

Speaker 74 That's where she went.

Speaker 114 I can see when she left the house, I can see everywhere she went.

Speaker 114 And as I scroll in and scroll in,

Speaker 24 I stopped. There's a pin

Speaker 24 on his apartment complex.

Speaker 62 Wow.

Speaker 56 There's your proof. She went to see Lewis Gumpenberger at his house.

Speaker 114 It was the first time we knew how they came in contact. I was astounded at what I was looking at.

Speaker 114 I played devil's advocate, reviewed the material, went back, did my conversions, did my math, looked at the time zones.

Speaker 114 There was no mistake.

Speaker 16 I knew.

Speaker 94 How long was she there?

Speaker 114 Approximately three to five minutes.

Speaker 35 Clear evidence that Pam's phone was at Lewis Gumpenberger's apartment.

Speaker 26 Meaning, Pam herself must have been there, too.

Speaker 46 But they had to know for sure.

Speaker 114 So what we did was everywhere that we could plot she had been,

Speaker 114 Brian sent out teams. We just flooded the entire route for any possible camera footage.
And if Google said she was there and there was a camera, she was there.

Speaker 93 There was video from all over.

Speaker 41 But one particular bit told the tale.

Speaker 104 A camera on a bakery en route from Lewis's apartment to Pam's house.

Speaker 114 And they had video.

Speaker 65 It's very grainy.

Speaker 114 It's tough to see.

Speaker 85 But there in Pam's car was Lewis Gumpenberger.

Speaker 77 At least it sure looked like it to them.

Speaker 114 He had a distinct Mizzou baseball cap, the University of Missouri baseball cap he wore all the time, and a shirt that he wore. And

Speaker 114 I believe you see him in the passenger seat going to his death. It's eerie.

Speaker 114 He's a ghost-like figure in the passenger seat of her vehicle before he becomes an actual ghost.

Speaker 39 With all that evidence.

Speaker 90 I think it's time to take her into custody.

Speaker 114 And the prosecutor was right there in our offices, and he just went through it. We laid it out.
He asked his questions and then he said, yeah, let's move.

Speaker 12 Coming up, Pam in custody, sneaking a pen off the table, touching her neck.

Speaker 87 What was she up to?

Speaker 90 You never want anyone to die on your watch.

Speaker 1 A mochi moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying.

Speaker 1 This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1. He understood, and I felt supported, not judged.

Speaker 1 I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Speaker 5 Thanks, Sadie.

Speaker 1 I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 4 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 24 A BetterHelp ad.

Speaker 18 This November, BetterHelp is encouraging people to reach out, grab lunch with an old friend, call your parents, or even find support in therapy.

Speaker 18 BetterHelp makes it easy with its therapist match commitment and over 12 years of online therapy experience, matching members with qualified professionals.

Speaker 18 And just like that lunch with an old friend, once you do reach out, you'll wonder, why didn't I do this sooner? Start now at betterhelp.com for 10% off your first month.

Speaker 19 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 82 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 111 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 82 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 3 We got clear facts.

Speaker 61 Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 34 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 13 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 108 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 34 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 106 Life, for would-be devious criminals, must be so burdensome of late with all those smart devices we just can't seem to live without.

Speaker 13 It is very, very difficult to get away with a crime these days, especially a crime this elaborate.

Speaker 26 Yes, said the prosecutor, technology is all-knowing in a certain kind of way, and technology is what finally busted Pam Hop.

Speaker 105 A week after Pam shot Lewis Gumpenberger to death, they slapped on the cuffs, put her in their car, and told her she was under arrest for murder.

Speaker 61 How was she in the car?

Speaker 24 Cold.

Speaker 24 Calm. Cool.
Yeah.

Speaker 90 Yeah. And in fact, when we were explaining...

Speaker 90 to her what was transpiring that you're being arrested for murder. We have a mountain mountain of evidence and you're not getting away with this.
Her only statement to me was, I'm a little cold.

Speaker 90 Could you turn down the AC?

Speaker 54 So cold, said Prosecutor Lomar.

Speaker 72 She could carefully, deliberately stalk, lie to, and then kill Lewis Gumpenberger.

Speaker 68 And then, when first interviewed, disparage the man in further service of her story.

Speaker 14 I mean, it was like he was drunk. I mean, he was

Speaker 14 literally like his tongue was this thick.

Speaker 13 I have to think at some point

Speaker 13 during their approximate 30-minute interaction, she had to say to herself, I got the wrong guy here.

Speaker 92 Maybe, and yet she went ahead with it.

Speaker 13 She did it anyway. I think she believes she's smarter than everybody.

Speaker 13 She's always the smartest person in the room.

Speaker 92 Maybe they are the smartest people in the room, but most frequently those are the ones who get caught.

Speaker 13 This is a pretty cool crime story for a seventh grader, maybe a fifth grader. But to actually come up with the story and then try to execute the story.

Speaker 56 And think you're going to persuade people that it's true.

Speaker 13 You can't be very bright if that's what you do. That's what she did.

Speaker 92 She won't be happy to hear you say that.

Speaker 16 She probably won't.

Speaker 78 Pam's plan was so feather-brained.

Speaker 64 that when police arrived at her house and she told them the intruder demanded Russ's money, and they asked if she knew a Russ.

Speaker 85 She said, no.

Speaker 90 We know who Russ is. How do you not know who Russ is?

Speaker 72 But, in fact, said the prosecutor, Pam's plot in which Lewis was the tragic collateral damage was all about Russ and the murder of his wife, Betsy.

Speaker 23 I think the whole point was to point the finger back at him, to show that, hey, I'm right after all.

Speaker 13 I had nothing to do with that case. And look how bad he wants me to go down for it.

Speaker 13 Bad enough to hire somebody to kill me.

Speaker 110 That's what it was all about.

Speaker 25 Prosecutor Lomar gave it a good think, assessed the evidence, considered the abject cruelty, and announced Pam would face the death penalty.

Speaker 13 In Missouri, the death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst. We felt like just the degree of disregard for human life that she exhibited.

Speaker 13 by luring a mentally disabled man to her home and shooting him in cold blood and then making up a crazy story on top of it. We thought that is the worst of the worst.

Speaker 8 My office received a call close in time to the incident back in August of 2016 and we were on the case almost from the very beginning.

Speaker 67 Nik Williams was one of Pam's defense attorneys.

Speaker 8 We would challenge a lot of the evidence because nothing involved with this incident specifically is on surveillance video. There were no witnesses to what took place on that driveway.

Speaker 8 We also know that she has a right to defend herself inside her own home, especially in light of any deadly force that could be used against her.

Speaker 58 Williams made it clear the Times attorneys would challenge every claim the state leveled against her, including her movements.

Speaker 27 She stopped at Lewis Gumpenberger's home, was there for about four minutes, went directly from Gumpenberger's home to her home where this little playlet occurred on her driveway and in her home.

Speaker 17 However, there's no eyewitness to that car moving, who is in the car while it's moving, and therefore there are no eyewitnesses to the actual incident that takes place.

Speaker 62 But for a moment along the way, it was not clear Pam would need a defense at all.

Speaker 55 It happened right after detectives arrested her and began their formal interview when she asked for a lawyer.

Speaker 14 I'd like him to be called now.

Speaker 39 Now, watch.

Speaker 49 The detectives left the room to make arrangements.

Speaker 26 Pam's eyes fixed on the table.

Speaker 55 She spotted a pen behind her water bottle.

Speaker 39 Then, quickly, quietly, she reached for the bottle, pulled it with the pen, palmed the pen, tucked it into her pants, then felt for the arteries in her neck.

Speaker 55 When the detectives returned, she asked to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 43 It was a moment before they realized she was stabbing herself.

Speaker 90 You never want anyone to die on your watch, and especially knowing that there was a press conference in about 30 minutes.

Speaker 90 They really didn't want to lead into the press conference with, oh, and by the way, Pam Huck killed herself.

Speaker 95 Indeed.

Speaker 42 Oh, indeed.

Speaker 12 Coming up, a final chance to come clean.

Speaker 13 She's just heard the state's evidence, and the judge turns to her and says, ma'am, as to these charges, how do you plead?

Speaker 114 Dead silence.

Speaker 87 When dateline continues.

Speaker 54 Pam Hup did not manage to kill herself with the big pen she sneaked from that police interview room when she was charged with murder.

Speaker 48 It looked like she'd aimed at major blood vessels in her neck and wrists, but she didn't hit any.

Speaker 13 Did she really want to kill herself? I don't think she did. I think she's too much of a coward for that.

Speaker 13 I think she knew that she's now going to be primetime again, and everybody's going to be paying attention to Pam Hup. We came to find out later that the injuries were mostly superficial.

Speaker 39 Instead, the incident joined a whole catalog of Pamishness,

Speaker 54 along with greed and selfishness and narcissism, manipulation, conniving, and lethal violence.

Speaker 93 Pam's trial was both highly anticipated and delayed.

Speaker 36 Delayed and delayed.

Speaker 93 And then the rumor raced around.

Speaker 72 There'd be no trial at all.

Speaker 93 The rumor was true.

Speaker 39 Pam, once facing the death penalty, was taking a plea deal.

Speaker 16 So when you heard that there was going to be a deal in this case, what did you think?

Speaker 118 I'm not unrealistic. I wasn't hoping and thinking that she was going to own up to what she did to Fatsy.

Speaker 118 I was at least hoping that she would own up to what she did to Mr. Kompenberger.

Speaker 72 Would she?

Speaker 104 Pam had agreed to take what they call an Alfred plea.

Speaker 37 Meaning, she agreed to plead guilty because the state had enough evidence to convict her, but not because she admitted to it all.

Speaker 76 It's It's not kind of a half-hearted victory.

Speaker 13 It leaves a bad taste in some people's mouth, sure. I would love to have her stand up there and explain in great detail what she was doing and why she did it and how she feels about it now.

Speaker 104 But Prosecutor Lomar had come to believe Pam Hupp would never ever do that.

Speaker 26 And what for the extraordinary cost of a death penalty trial and limited resources, Lomar reasoned that saving the money and putting Pam away for life anyway made sense.

Speaker 43 And so one afternoon this past June, a great crowd assembled, so big they had to move to a larger courtroom.

Speaker 39 No cameras allowed.

Speaker 55 All there to watch a very different looking Pam walk in to face the judge and her sins and accept her fate.

Speaker 10 She aged a lot. She got skinny.

Speaker 24 Her hair got real long gray.

Speaker 118 The best description of her I could come up with was the old hag that gave Snow White the apple.

Speaker 23 She looks a bit like that now.

Speaker 10 She still had that grin on her face. She still had that arrogance about her.
None of that changed.

Speaker 27 Nothing at all.

Speaker 43 They were uncertain for that very reason.

Speaker 39 Anxious.

Speaker 40 Would Pam finally take the deal on offer?

Speaker 55 Would she admit to anything?

Speaker 3 I would say there was a mood of anticipation. Everybody knew what was coming, but there was still doubt as to whether or not this was going to actually happen.

Speaker 3 With her pride, I didn't think she could get on that stand under oath and say she was guilty.

Speaker 79 Even the prosecutor, who dropped the death penalty and made that Alford plea deal, was unsure.

Speaker 13 There's a point in the hearing where she's just heard the state's evidence, and the judge turns to her and says,

Speaker 13 ma'am, as to these charges, how do you plead?

Speaker 13 Dead silence. For what seemed like 10 minutes to me.
I don't think it was that long. It was a few seconds.

Speaker 57 And then finally, Pam Hupp said the word, guilty.

Speaker 54 Two months later, the judge gave her the mandatory sentence for murder, life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 30 years for armed criminal action.

Speaker 108 The same charges that I got charged with.

Speaker 118 I always wanted her to get the same sentence that I did.

Speaker 78 Babbitt cleaned up by the time she was processed into state prison, a look of...

Speaker 98 What is that? Defiance on her face.

Speaker 26 As for Lincoln County and its prosecution of Russ for the murder of his wife, Betsy, in 2018, the judge in Russ Faria's first trial and prosecutor Leah Askey were voted out of their jobs.

Speaker 29 The man who beat the prosecutor 74 to 26 percent is this man, Mike Wood.

Speaker 15 This is kind of unusual for the local election of a DA.

Speaker 3 Certainly unusual, yeah.

Speaker 26 And now Mike Wood is reopening the Betsy Faria case, reinvestigating it, and following the evidence, he said, wherever it takes him.

Speaker 3 We want to seek justice. We want answers for the family.
And that's my job to try to seek those.

Speaker 49 The Gumpenberger case, with Pam's apparent aim to frame Russ again, provides him with some ammunition.

Speaker 3 If you're willing to stage a killing of someone in order to attempt to deflect or cover up issues that were in a neighboring county, ought to lead you to believe that if you're willing to kill somebody here,

Speaker 3 potentially you're willing to kill somebody somewhere else.

Speaker 70 Two people murdered.

Speaker 57 But the question is,

Speaker 70 were there three?

Speaker 12 Coming up, someone else connected to Pam, found dead.

Speaker 120 She looked over and saw the body.

Speaker 16 Must have been quite a shock for that housekeeper.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 2 Based on what you saw, could that possibly have been an accident?

Speaker 60 No.

Speaker 58 So many questions about Pam Hop.

Speaker 57 And one particular big, disturbing question lingers even now.

Speaker 58 And it's about someone else altogether.

Speaker 3 It is Pam Hup who was the last one with her. We know what she's capable of.

Speaker 36 Joel Schwartz was talking about Pam's own mother, Shirley Newman.

Speaker 79 For that, we need to travel back in time to the year 2012.

Speaker 48 I had an accident two years ago.

Speaker 91 Here was Pam Hupp talking to the lead detective building a murder case against Russ Faria.

Speaker 36 They were talking about insurance and money and motives for murder.

Speaker 49 And Pam told the detective that Betsy's $150,000 of life insurance was too paltry to be any kind of motive for murder for her.

Speaker 22 If I really, hate to say it, wanted money, my mom's worth the half a million that I get when she dies. If I really wanted money,

Speaker 22 There was an easier way than trying to combat somebody that's physically stronger than me. I'm just saying.

Speaker 72 My mom's worth half a million?

Speaker 100 Pam's mother, Shirley, 77, lived in a retirement complex one county over.

Speaker 56 Until Halloween 2013, almost two years after Betsy was murdered, Shirley was killed in a fall from her third-floor balcony.

Speaker 49 Pam had been the very last person known to have seen Shirley alive the day before.

Speaker 91 That's when she told the staff that her mother would not be coming down for dinner or for breakfast in the morning. They found her body the next afternoon.

Speaker 100 A couple of the bent and broken spindles from her balcony railing were lying nearby.

Speaker 56 It was sometime later when Robert Patrick of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch heard about it.

Speaker 120 One of the staff members came into her apartment and noticed the water was running, and I think she noticed that the patio door was ajar.

Speaker 120 There were some things that were kind of knocked around, and then some of the railings had been dislodged.

Speaker 27 So then she went and looked over.

Speaker 120 And then she looked over and saw the body.

Speaker 16 Must have been quite a shock for that housekeeper.

Speaker 24 Yes.

Speaker 54 The police came, took pictures.

Speaker 55 There was an autopsy.

Speaker 72 It was ruled an accident.

Speaker 32 But three years later, in 2016, we did some poking around.

Speaker 95 And this was curious.

Speaker 98 That autopsy revealed that Shirley had about 14 times the recommended dose for a woman her age of ambien or its equivalent in her system.

Speaker 104 And that balcony railing seemed pretty sturdy to us.

Speaker 108 How did she crash right through it?

Speaker 95 We asked a structural engineer named Justin Hall to do a little math.

Speaker 58 Justin calculated the maximum force that 200 plus pounds Shirley could have exerted on those spindles.

Speaker 93 That is, if she tripped on the threshold and fell headlong full speed across her balcony and into the spindles.

Speaker 62 The momentum force falling at that rate, at that far, it would almost multiply her weight times two.

Speaker 99 So we're looking at about 425 pounds into the handrail, headfirst.

Speaker 32 Six of the spindles broke from the balcony and were bent.

Speaker 25 So Justin put together a little demo

Speaker 77 using six slightly thinner spindles.

Speaker 99 I'm just going to demonstrate how strong they are.

Speaker 110 So we decided to use concrete bags, pretty heavy.

Speaker 2 Each of those weighs what? 94 pounds?

Speaker 99 94 pounds.

Speaker 58 Many bags of concrete later.

Speaker 29 The spindles remained unbent.

Speaker 61 Justin figured it would take at least 2,000 pounds to bend or break them.

Speaker 94 Interesting.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 based on what you saw, those photographs and this test,

Speaker 2 could that possibly have been an accident?

Speaker 62 No.

Speaker 62 No way.

Speaker 99 No way. I mean, even if she was running full speed,

Speaker 60 no way. I guess it makes you wonder how that could have been broken so badly.

Speaker 99 It's hard to say at this point. But it wasn't somebody's head and shoulders going through.
That's what we've proven right here.

Speaker 40 Pam has denied she had anything to do with her mother's death.

Speaker 26 The estate was divided among Pam and her siblings.

Speaker 98 She received about $100,000.

Speaker 105 A year after Pam's arrest for murder, and with the continuing talk of her possible involvement in Betsy Faria's case, the St.

Speaker 106 Louis County Medical Examiner changed Shirley's manner of death from accidental to undetermined.

Speaker 54 Though the local police still maintain there is no evidence of a crime.

Speaker 96 But around St.

Speaker 31 Louis, people do talk.

Speaker 49 And Joel Schwartz certainly understands why.

Speaker 3 At this point now, she's been around a minimum of three people who died suspiciously, and she's been the last person with them.

Speaker 79 Russ Faria lives a quiet and modest life now, still certain that Pam killed his Betsy.

Speaker 118 The only reason I can think of is for money.

Speaker 118 And it wasn't really a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but money will motivate people to do

Speaker 118 all kinds of things,

Speaker 16 good or bad.

Speaker 3 That's why Betsy's dead?

Speaker 23 I believe so.

Speaker 48 Pam has denied to us and others that she had anything to do with Betsy's murder.

Speaker 116 But then, as she has said herself, money makes people do crazy, crazy things.

Speaker 93 And the thing about Pam is, if anyone would know, it's her.

Speaker 12 That's all for this edition of Dateline.

Speaker 65 We'll see you again next Friday at 9 8th Central.

Speaker 12 And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.

Speaker 13 I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 65 Good night.